Hensley Field
Posted: 20 May 2019 21:42
Dallas finally looks to develop Hensley Field — 738-acres of rotten land on prime real estate
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/comm ... eal-estate
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/comm ... eal-estate
The former Navy property — 738 acres of it on the shores of Mountain Creek Lake — stretches into the infinite horizon, a mostly industrial wasteland broken up by the occasional derelict building or shipping container. By the city's own description, there's no there there — save for "buildings, drainage infrastructure, open space, and extensive paved surfaces, including runway, taxiways, aircraft parking ramps, roadways and vehicle parking lots." Hardly a destination location.
Thursday I asked Peer Chacko, Dallas' chief planning officer, why now — after all these decades of waiting and wishing and wanting — has the city decided to make something out of all that nothing.
"I guess timing is everything," he said.
By which he means Hensley Field is now considered an Opportunity Zone, an "economically distressed" place where incentives are available to investors willing to invest 90 percent of the capital gains that should have gone to the IRS. The feds created Opportunity Zones when they passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act two years ago. And from a list submitted by city officials across the state — among them Mayor Mike Rawlings — Gov. Greg Abbott chose the census tracts in Texas that qualified for such investments.